He Must Be Stopped

Conversation Prompt

“How long has your mother been counting me as one of her children?”

“About… How old are we? Almost fourteen years now, I think. Hold on, I’ll check.”

“But, we only met thirteen years ago. How could she…? Why would she?”

“She loved you like her real child within the first month of meeting you, which, yeah, it’ll be fourteen years in two weeks, she wants to organise a party to celebrate.”

the level of censorship around this man is ridiculous, what happened to free speech? It’s just his name.

in between ᯓ★

jealousy prompts (oooooo)

⇴ person a sees person b absolutely hit it off with person c (and is very obviously pained because of it). person b comes over to talk to person a, but is only met with awkward conversation instead of the same boisterous talks they usually have.

⇴ person b sees person a with another person, and they have to bite down on their lip so hard whenever person a talks about the other person, because deep down person b wishes that a was with them (this was more pining than jealousy but oh well).

⇴ "was that a good conversation?" "oh... yeah. it was great" "great." [and there's this thick, awkward silence afterwards].

⇴ person a wishes that they could be person b. person b has it all: charisma, hilariousness, the friends, the partner, etc. (but maybe person a isn't jealous of person b... maybe person a is desperately craving person b's attention and that's why they're jealous)

⇴ person b is watching person a from afar, chatting it up with this other person. b has a strong urge to pull a away from everyone and pull a into b's own little world, but refuses because they want to keep a happy, even if it's at a cost at b's own happiness.

⇴ person a and person b are dating, and person a just finished a conversation with someone person b was jealous of. when they get home, person b is a bit more clingier and so much more touchy. cue a's teasing and b hiding their face in the crook of a's neck.

⇴ ^ "so... are you finally gonna admit you were jealous?" "uh, no, because i wasn't" (b says as they press kisses to a's neck and hold a close to their body).

⇴ "you guys look good together." "really?" (and a/b wants to shout NO!!!!!!)

⇴ "and i love you. i love it when you do the double-tuck thing with your hair when you're nervous, does [person c] notice that? do they know that when you shove your hands in your pockets, you're really just doing it so you can fidget without anyone knowing? or, what about the way you look at people–" and person a is in total shock the whole time.

⇴ "i can't take it anymore. i want–need you. i don't care about what [person c] thinks, i only care about you. tell me you need me too, and i'll stay."

⇴ person b is sulking after seeing person a reunite with someone they've been close to since forever (think family friend...yikes). person a thinks it's adorable and goes to "comfort" b by peppering their face with kisses and giving them words of affirmation.

⇴ "hey" kiss on the jaw "you don't have anything to worry about" kiss on the corner of the lips "i chose you for a reason" kiss on the temple "you're the one i love" kiss on the lips.

⇴ ^^ cut to person b being like "really?" with a cheeky grin.

⇴ person a is about to reach out to person b, only to see person b walk past them to go see person c. person a turns around to person c and immediately feels flooded with comparisons. specifically, "why don't they like me like they like them?"

⇴ person a is constantly checking the relationship status of person b, and their heart always aches when they continue to see person c's username in person b's bio.

30 Day OTP Domesticity Challenge

Doing Dishes

Yardwork

Tidying up for company

Making dinner

Laundry Day

Can I Wash Your Back?

Pet(s)

First Day Of Work/School

Road Trip

Long-Distance Phone Call

Dusting

Regular Maintenance

Movie Cuddles

“Us” Day

Beautification Rituals

Brushing Teeth

Hair Washing

Wash The Car/Horse/Vehicle

Wearing Each Other’s Clothes/Wearing My Shirt

Meeting The Parents

New Year’s Eve Party

Drinking at Home

Teamwork

“Kiss The Cook”/ “Mr. Good Lookin’ Is Cookin’” Apron

Backyard Barbeque

Pool Party

“I never want to lose you.”

Marriage

Reading Together

Love Makes A House A Home

Tw: SA

Do you have any prompts of someone who experienced SA coming to?

I’ve done some research of what it may be like and I’m trying to handle it as respectfully as possible without it being too detailed (in a way that may exaggerate, downplay, or horribly triggering) but I haven’t really found many resources. I wouldn’t want to seem disrespectful by just bluntly asking survivors about it but from what I *have* found isn’t enough to have a general writing idea for it.

Any help is greatly appreciated, and any thoughts is also understandable! Make sure to take breaks and take care of yourself!!

trigger warning: mentions of sexual assault

flinching. lots of flinching. whumpee flinched away when caretaker gently tapped them on the shoulder from behind. caretaker didn’t mean to startle them, they (caretaker) were still learning to adapt to whumpee’s PTSD, but sometimes they felt like they kept messing up and harming whumpee more as a result.

miscommunication and misunderstanding; whumpee believing caretaker was angry at them for being “weak and jumpy”.

if whumpee and caretaker were lovers, the assault could affect them in terms of their being intimate with each other. the thought process whumpee went through may be these;

whumpee being scared of having sex, even if it was with their lover, after what happened.

whumpee feeling ‘guilty’ (though it wasn’t their fault at all) when their partner told them it was okay if they weren’t ready, because they felt like they were keeping their partner waiting, and eventually their partner would expect them to be ready. but what if they could never be ready again? would their lover force them or would they leave them for someone else then? or would they be disappointed in them? — and whumpee didn’t even know if they wanted their partner to find someone else who’d be ready, because while they felt guilty for not being able to give their partner what they wanted (sex), they didn’t want to lose their partner either. *this didn’t mean their partner wanted only sex, but whumpee’s own mind was their biggest enemy right now and therefore they believed their partner prioritized sex over their recovery and mental health, which didn’t always have to be true.

self hate. whumpee could be disgusted with themself, especially their own body, for what happened. maybe they believed they were dirty and unworthy of being loved now. (again, this couldn’t be further from the truth, but whumpee’s mind kept telling them all these thoughts, and for someone who went through that, it was hard not to be convinced by these thoughts).

when whumpee looked at caretaker or anyone else, all they saw was pity. and that only made things worse.

whumpee believing all they were now was a piece of rotting meat, and that was all they’d ever be. this was their own mind poisoning them with untrue thinking, but the struggle was very much real nonetheless.

maybe caretaker was as struggling as whumpee was, trying to help whumpee recover and help whumpee learn to love themself again.

maybe caretaker blamed themself for not being able to protect whumpee when the assault happened. caretaker kept replaying in their head all the things they could have done differently that would have prevented the assault from happening; maybe if they had been there with whumpee, if they had picked up the phone, etc.

to sum up, everything would be a struggle. not just for whumpee but also for whumpee’s friends and family and everyone who loved and cared about them.

when the character who's like "i will never reveal my trauma to anyone" gets a high fever and, while weak and delirious, starts spilling every.

last.

secret.

I was inspired by @jezifster's recent question about non-gendered royal titles, and I put together this graphic to serve as a jumping off point for people writing monarchies in SFF !

Obviously this non-exhaustive list contains mainly western titles, all in English. Feel free add any on additional gender neutral terminologies that you can think of, including those from different languages and cultures!

A small addition: I'm not a linguist or historian and put this list together based on some quick googling! While you're free to flex the usage and meanings of these words however you choose, researching the real-world context of each term before using them in your own writing is a best practice.

Further Notes on Writing Signed Language

So I had a good think about this, based off of what I have written lately. As I go further into my novel, do even more research into different types of sign, and start on the arc that is written solely from the POV of my deaf character, I’ve begun to realize some other differences between signed and spoken dialogue.

For one thing, punctuation doesn’t apply in the same way. There is punctuation in sign language, but as I’ve talked about before, it is mostly facial; therefore, you describe it as a part of the dialogue tags. So then, what do about the commas, colons and semi-colons? In this case, the n-dash is your friend! The aforementioned punctuation marks indicate changes in tone, alterations of pace and pauses. Therefore, they can be replaced with an  n-dash, like so

“You and I – I don’t think we can continue.”

And fingerspelled words would be written as single letters, hyphenated into a word:

”You and I - going to L-O-N-D-O-N.”

For another, the syntax of your translated signed dialogue is subtly different. One sign can ususally mean several different words and filler words are absent. If someone were to say “really big.” in sign, they might just make the sign for “big” and super over-exaggerate.

So, verbal dialogue version:

“It was really, really big!” Lottie jumped and down in excitement, her eyes shining. 

And the signed dialogue version:

“The dog was huge!” Lottie flung out her hands into the word, making it larger than it needed to be, bouncing on her heels.

Keeping in mind that large, big, huge, bountiful (and other connected synonyms) are all the same sign.

I don’t like to write signed language in the syntax that it would be signed in (Name, yours, what instead of “what is your name”). Not only is this confusing for non-signing readers, but it also reads as childish or overly-simplistic for readers who don’t understand sign, which reinforces the harmful stereotype of deaf people being stupid/infantilisation of deaf people. It is impossible to truly do signed language justice in writing, because it’s a language made for hands, bodies and faces.

This all comes together to mean that the sentence structure of dialogue in sign will be different. You would use less contractions (isn’t, you’re, might’ve etc), fewer modifiers and shorter chunks of dialogue with the description of the sign in between.

If it reads differently or feels strange, that’s okay: signed language is different to verbal language and so they won’t sound the same as one another in writing. They’re more like cousins or step-siblings than part of the same direct family group. You’re utilizing different descriptors and tools.

Hopefully, this also answers the repeated issue of differentiation, which has come up time and time again from various people. Best of luck to you all with your writing x